Business

While Squealers restaurant, formerly located on East Stuart Drive in Galax, had to shut its doors last week, owner Mark Davis said his catering business and Squealers Cafe at the Crossroads Institute are going strong.
For the past two years, Davis’ restaurant has offered some delicious helpings of barbecue, ribs, beef brisket, chicken and burgers. But in a tough economy and with the competition of other area restaurants, he said it just became too difficult to remain in business.

INDEPENDENCE — Grayson County will have a new medical clinic across from Grayson Highlands School after supervisors approved a zoning change request Aug. 9.
The site previously hosted Young’s General Store which closed several years ago.
Troy Sage made the application to change the property located on Virginia 16 in Troutdale from rural farm to commercial use. He said the building has operated as commercial for 30 years but the zoning has always been rural farm.

It’s official — after closing in 2009, Bogey’s Restaurant will reopen Aug. 30.
Not only will the restaurant give customers another place to eat, but it will also boost the area’s economy after 28 employees were hired, many of them with restaurant experience.
The restaurant is owned by Kenneth Belton, Doug Morgan, Earl Morgan and Tuck Sage.

Family Dollar officials plan to open a new store on U.S. 52 in Cana before the end of the year, a spokeswoman said in response to questions from The Gazette.
Plans for the store have been filed with the Carroll County building official’s office, and Bryn Winburn, company PR manager, believes that the construction of the new location will begin soon.
“We do plan to open a store in Cana later this year,” she responded in an e-mail. “This store will be approximately 8,000 square feet and will employ eight to 10 team members.”

HILLSVILLE — Plans for construction of a new 8,000-square-foot Family Dollar store have been submitted to the Carroll County building official’s office.
The plans call for the store to be located on U.S. 52 in the Cana area in a vacant lot near Stateline Furniture.
The review of the plans continues, with the erosion and sediment control plan being the last item needing to be approved.

It’s too soon to calculate the costs of restoring electricity to customers of Appalachian Power Co. who were left in the dark by last month’s ferocious windstorm.
The bill might come next year, in the form of a rate increase.
An APCo spokeswoman declined to say last week whether the utility will pass the costs of power line repair along to its customers through higher monthly bills.

After being on the market since 2009, Bogeys is finally reopening with new owners.
Bogeys is located at the intersection of Glendale Road and Country Club Lane, next to the Galax Municipal Golf Course.
When Kenneth Belton and other investors purchased the building about two months ago, they had initially thought to fix it up and put it back on the market.
But when people found out that the building had been sold, excitement began to build at the possibility of Bogeys reopening.

State regulators have approved Appalachian Power Co.’s request to increase the fee it charges customers to recover higher costs of coal and other fuel.
The new fuel rate approved by the State Corporation Commission is 2.953 cents per kilowatt-hour, an increase of 0.756 cents per kilowatt-hour from the rate established by the SCC in 2010.
For the average residential customer, the increase means the monthly bill for 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity will increase $7.56, or approximately 7.2 percent.

A local firm, TCR Management Group, recently signed a contract with the Virginia Community College System to provide training classes for utility line groundsman.
TCR Management’s Eddie Reavis began providing the training through Wytheville Community College two years ago, and has now expanded those vocational offerings to all 23 institutions in the Virginia Community College System, according to Greg Hampton, the company’s business development officer.